Thursday, August 11, 2005

design logic - datacloud Design Logic. Mark Gimein has a guest commentary on Gizmodo on different sorts of logic in system design: It sounds great, but there's a problem here: it's that, in fact, lots of gadgets are designed with elegance and logic in mind. It's just that people aren't. People work in funny ways, and some of the ways of doing things that they like most are exactly the ones that don't make sense. Take the ubiquitous hierarchical menus of the digital camera world. God knows how much effort has been devoted to putting together just the right sequence of menu presses, organized with Dewey decimal clarity and maximum button placement economy. Gimein separates "logical" design from "intuitive" design, using a Pentax ZX-5n film camera that combine autofocus features with a design drawn directly from older manual-focus cameras. He then contrasts the features of that camera, which include dedicated dials for aperature, shutter speed, and exposure compensation, to modern cameras that bury such features in hierarchical menus. In modern cameras, the result is a clean and simple physical exterior with relatively non-intuitive workings. (A similar trend has afflicted video cameras, with many functions that used to be controlled by exterior dials and buttons now migrated... [datacloud] 7:05:45 PM

Quantum Computing on the Science Blog Better memory with quantum computer bits. Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have used charged atoms (ions) to demonstrate a quantum physics version of computer memory lasting longer than 10 seconds--more than 100,000 times longer than in previous experiments on the same ions. The advance improves prospects for making practical, reliable quantum computers (which make use of the properties of quantum systems rather than transistors for performing calculations or storing information). Quantum computers, if they can be built, could break today's best encryption systems, accelerate database searching, develop novel products such as fraud-proof digital signatures or simulate complex biological systems to help design new drugs. [Science Blog - Science News Articles from Medicine, Space, Physics and More] 6:08:25 PM

podcast dallo spazio Podcast dallo spazio. Steve Robinson, uno degli astronauti attualmente in orbita sullo Shuttle, ha registrato il primo (breve) podcast dallo spazio, in cui racconta anche le sue impressioni quando è dovuto uscire per effettuare le riparazioni di cui tanto si è parlato nei giorni scorsi. Sono rimasto impressionato dalla sicurezza e dall'ottimo umore che traspaiono dalla voce di Robinson. Sarà che per essere lassÃ' bisogna avere qualità non comuni (io neanche se mi coprissero d'oro), ma credo che anche la buona riuscita delle operazioni di riparazione hanno influito sul morale. [qix.it] 6:00:02 PM